Smoking Can Improve Your Health...
May 7th, 2007
My name is Alex Priest. I was lucky enough to know Chris for 20 years, first as a colleague and then as a friend. Outside work we shared a love of music, playing together in a band made up of other colleagues and friends. The thing I remember above all about Chris was his fantastic sense of humour. It was this above all else that I loved about him. As far as Chris was concerned, the more impertinent or disrespectful the joke, the better. I therefore found it easy to make him laugh ! Chris, Tim Benbrook and I used to draw heavily on The Derek & Clive Live album for humorous content, often helpless with laughter as we repeated the sketches back to each other, usually across the crowded office...
One event sums up Chris' love of gallows humour more than most: I once went to see him at the hospital to help relieve the boredom of chemotherapy. He was missing from his room and nobody knew where he was. I searched everywhere and eventually found him on the fire escape, smoking a cigarette. I sat there with him as he smoked and we cracked terrible jokes to each other until a nurse heard us cackling and came out. She ticked us both off, saying that there was no point in Chris being in hospital if he was going to harm himself by smoking, and that I should know better than to encourage him.
A fair enough comment, I thought, and sat there shamefaced, but Chris just laughed and said to her "What, am I going to catch cancer or something ?" The nurse's eyebrows shot up, but to her credit she realised she was on to a loser and retired gracefully. Chris and I were like a couple of kids who'd got one over on the grown-ups, shaking with laughter for a good five minutes; it was a truly magic moment. Derek & Clive, eat your hearts out !
0 comments »Drunken Scrabble
May 3rd, 2007
This is a story I’ve told many times, but it’s a true story that deserves a re-telling.
This particular game occurred sometime around late 1989, when Chris lived with Janis in South Woodford. Janis was away doing a play or something and I met up with Chris and Derek who had spent most of the evening in the pub. I wasn’t drinking because I was driving, but Derek and Chris were very well lubricated. And by the time Chris suggested we go back to his flat for a game of Scrabble, his pupils were large black discs and his bottom lip had started to become apout.
This was the first time I’d played Scrabble with Chris, and Chris’s level of inebriation led me to sense an easy kill; and as the game commenced, with more alcohol being consumed, there was nothing to disabuse me of that notion. By the time we neared the end of the game, my sobriety was in stark contrast to that of my opponents. On an alcohol-content scale of 1-10, I was a 1, Derek a 5 and Chris an 8.5, so naturally I had a significant enough lead to feel confident that I was going to win, but still impressed by Chris’s ability to have been able to find words through the mist of alcohol, andy not in the least bit surprised when he disappeared for about 15 minutes to go and talk to god on the great white telephone.
We were on our last tiles and I didn’t want to abort the game, and was about to suggest to Derek that we just continue without Chris, when he staggered back into the room. He clutched the back of his chair and appeared to try to focus on something as he swayed, clearly trying to make sense of his last tiles. Derek and I watched him, expecting him to fall at any minute, or to say “oggay…i gown da bed…” or something equally resignatory. But he just stood there and swayed a little more before leaning forwards to clutch drunkenly at his tiles, taking each one and pressing it down with great deliberation onto the board to form a word. He then turned and left the room, lurching back out through the doorway to stagger down the hall. We heard a groan, some squeaky springs and a hollow thump as his body obviously hit the bed. Derek went to check on him and returned to confirm that Chris had in fact passed out. We both looked at the scrabble board to look at the nonsense word Chris had laid down before going.
It was a seven letter word.
A real seven letter word. an extra 50 points
A real seven letter word that hit a triple word score.
A real seven letter word that hit a triple word score that won him the game.
He was snoring as we let ourselves out.
0 comments »